Knowing that it was
a clammy mid-
November night,
my words refused

to fall into spaces.
My metaphors hid
themselves behind
the foggy silhouettes

of winter, pallid and
ungovernable,
like the ghosts
of night.

And my symbols,
the arterial routes
of my poem,
have lost their

vague sheen,
and stood as noisy
adjuncts of my poem,
with neither

the vigor of
colloquy, nor
the vim of runic
certainty.